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You all were lucky to escape its attentions before this.
You two look like you collected some attentions yourselves, said the
thickset man, frowning at their visible bruises and scrapes. He turned to the
lanky boy. Here, Tad go fetch your mama. The boy nodded eagerly and pelted
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back down the lane toward the woods.
What happened here? Dag asked in turn.
This released a spate of increasingly eager tale-telling, one man
interrupting another with corroboration or argument. Some twenty, or possibly
thirty, mud-men had erupted out of the surrounding woods four days ago,
brutalizing and terrifying the farm folk, then driving them off in a
twenty-mile march southeast into the hills. The mud-men had kept the crowd
under control by the simple expedient of carrying the three youngest children
and threatening to dash out their brains against the nearest tree if anyone
resisted, a detail that made Fawn gasp but Dag merely look more expressionless
than ever. They had arrived at length at a crude campsite containing a couple
dozen other prisoners, mostly victims of road banditry; some had been held for
many weeks. There, the mud-men, uneasily supervised by a few human bandits,
seemed intent on making their new slaves excavate a mysterious hole in the
ground.
I don t understand that hole, said the thickset man, eldest son of the
graybeard and apparent leader of the farm folk, whose family name was
Horseford. The stringy old grandfather seemed querulous and addled traits that
seemed to predate the malice attack, Fawn judged from the practiced but
not-unkind way everyone fielded his complaints.
The malice the blight bogle was probably starting to try to mine, said Dag
thoughtfully. It was growing fast.
Yes, but the hole wasn t right for a mine, either, put in the red-haired
man, Sassa. He d turned out to be a brother-in-law of the house, present that
day to help with some log-hauling. He seemed less deeply shaken than the rest,
possibly because his wife and baby had been safely back in Glassforge and had
missed the horrific misadventure altogether. They didn t have enough tools,
for one thing, till those mud-men brought in the ones they stole from here.
They had folks digging with their hands and hauling dirt in bags made out of
their clothes. It was an awful mess.
Would be, at first, till the bogle caught someone with the know-how to do it
right, said Dag. Later, when it s safe again, you folks should get some real
miners to come in and explore the site. There must be something of value under
there; the malice would not have been mistaken about that. This part of the
country, I d guess an iron or coal seam, maybe with a forge planned to follow,
but it might be anything.
I d wondered if they were digging up another bogle, said Sassa. They re
supposed to come out of the ground, they say.
Dag s brows twitched up, and he eyed the man with new appraisal. Interesting
idea. When two bogles chance to emerge nearby, which happily doesn t occur too
often, they usually attack each other first thing.
That would save you Lakewalkers some trouble, wouldn t it?
No. Unfortunately. Because the winning bogle ends up stronger. Easier to
take them down piecemeal.
Fawn tried to imagine something stronger and more frightening than the
creature she had faced yesterday. When you were already as terrified as your
body could bear, what difference could it make if something was even worse?
She wondered if that explained anything about Dag.
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Movement at the end of the lane caught her eye. Another plow horse came out
of the woods and trotted ponderously up to the farmyard, a middle-aged woman
riding with the lanky boy up behind. They paused on the other side of the
well, the woman staring down hard at something, then came up to join the
others.
The red-haired Sassa, either more garrulous or more observant than his
in-laws, was finishing his account of yesterday s inexplicable uproar at the
digging camp: the sudden loss of wits and mad flight of their captor mud-men,
followed, not half an hour later, by the arrival from the sunset woods of a
very off-balance patrol of Lakewalkers. The Lakewalkers had been trailed in
turn by a mob of frantic friends and relatives of the captives from in and
around Glassforge. Leaving the local people to each other s care, the
patrollers had withdrawn to their ownLake walkerish concerns, which seemed
mainly to revolve around slaying all the mud-men they could catch and looking
for their mysterious missing man Dag, who they seemed to think somehow
responsible for the bizarre turn of events.
Dag rubbed his stubbled chin. Huh. I suppose Mari or Chato must have thought
this mining camp might be the lair. Following up traces from that bandit
hideout we raided night before last, I expect. That explains where they were
all day yesterday. And well into the night, sounds like.
Oh, aye, said the thickset man. Folks was still trailing into Glassforge
all night and into this morning, yours and ours.
The farmwife slid down off the horse and stood listening to this, her eyes
searching her house, Dag, and especially Fawn. Fawn guessed from the farm
men s talk that she must be the woman they d called Petti. Judging by the
faint gray in her hair, she was of an age with her husband, and as lean as he
was thick, tough and strappy, if tired-looking. Now she stepped forward. What
blood is all that in the tub out by the well?
Dag gave her a polite duck of his head. Miss S Bluefield s mostly, ma am. My
apologies for filching your linens. I ve been throwing another bucket of water
on them each time I go by. I ll try to get them cleaned up better before we
leave.
WenotI , some quick part of Fawn s mind noted at once, with a catch of
relief.
Mostly? The farmwife cocked her head at him, squinting. How d she get
hurt?
That would be her tale to tell, ma am.
Her face went still for an instant. Her eye flicked up to Fawn and then back,
to take in his empty cuff. You really kill that bogle that did all this?
He hesitated only briefly before replying, precisely but unexpansively, We
did.
She inhaled and gave a little snort. Don t you be troubling about my
laundry. The idea.
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